Miss Birdseye

Lisson's Gallery BOULE TO BRAID

Ah Ah Ah, I just found this old email(I'm in the middle of deleting) and I thought that the relation to my Come here Charlie post of a few days ago was too obvious to dismiss. I wonder if Richard Wentworth also goes to London Zoo. I wish I could e-mail him and ask him. Talking about the Lisson Gallery, which is the closest palace of 'high art' to my house, with the Serpentine Gallery and the Camden Art Centre, I do feel a bit sorry for them as just a couple of months ago, they started representing Ai WeiWei in the UK and they're having this show on at the moment and they don't even know if the guy is alive or dead and they must have twice as usual the amount of art students turning up at the gallery and looking enthralled. I personally can not believe that every thing we buy in this country is made in China, a country which abduct and en-prison artists and denies wrong doing, but still our leaders are telling us what it is that we should or should not do. Thank god for Lao Tse.

His house

economy and aesthetic

Subtle

You haven't got anything to say but you just can't keep quiet, can you?

The other day, Vivian asked me if I preferred reading in french or in english and it did not take me long to reply I preferred to read in english as I like the flow, the rhythm, the shortness of a lot of words, the intrusion of latin and greek radicals among all the celtic and germanic words, the fact that a lot of english literature is still written in good english when  the french books I have read recently, but for translations, all had this familiar tone, this dumbing down of language that is easy on the brain but not something I look for in literature. Honestly, I hardly ever read in french anymore, which is interesting because when I moved to England in 1995, I could hardly speak english. So, I will read Das Kapital in english as I believe it must translate better from german than french would. I have not smoked for 3 weeks. I feel increasingly that taking photographs is possibly not the adequate language to express myself and that words would have me stop insinuating and just spit it out. The only problem is that looking in  the dictionary every 30 words takes up much more time than pressing on a button. I'm going to
shoot those 40 water testing plastic tubes that I've got and see from there.

Oh by the way, now is the time to look at the program of the always brilliant Les Rencontres d"Arles. Going to the Ambika P3 exhibition space for the Photographer's Gallery annual show of the Deutsche Börse photography prize, awarded this year to the most deserving Jim Goldberg, reminded me of being in the old SNCF depot in Arles. I love photography exhibitions in industrial spaces, may be the acoustic of warehouses provides a good background to immerse oneself in an imaginary world. Or is it the power of old stones and crumbling plaster echoing the power of past event and heartfelt instants of the images?

Go to Arles before Frank Gehry turns Les Ateliers SNCF in to another luxury compound.

Carbacat

After all

Sometimes I find most difficult to accept that the stories in my head do not materialize. Particularly when there are feelings involved. Taking photographs is a good way of dealing with the deception, as it allows me to create a story which unfold half-way in my head and half-way in the physical world. No one ever appears in my pictures. Unless I'm getting paid for it.

Come here, Charlie!

They never saw

This story has been out a while but just in case you haven't heard of Vivian Maier, watch this, then go and visit the blog dedicated to her archive here.

Fragile

HC-K103_001_4-25‬‬Я

Hampstead Heath yesterday.

May be I could be a Land artist?

Vice

Today's special

Perpetuation

Every morning, I take my daughter to the french school and make my way back home. This take an hour and a half on a good day. When I get back home, I'll have a coffee and cigarette, do the washing up, check my email and look at The daily nice. Then, around 10 am, I start assessing what needs doing and what it is that I actually feel like doing. Around that time invariably, an anecdote from my past creep to mind, triggered off by an object, a name, an image, a thought. If I have a lot to do, there is no time to dwell on it, but if, like today, I ignore the obligations of the day, I am in for a roller-coaster ride of events and encounters that have led me here. It is not always healthy. It is always written in books that one should not dwell on the past; seize the day, they say...well, when the day consist of very little else than grime and chaos, the exploration of lost worlds and civilizations always seems like a good idea. 

I wanted to tell about my first commission, because the way it came about was pretty much how all dream jobs happen and its foreseen consequence was that once you start living the dream, there is no stopping you until you wake up and there is no dreams left to dream unless you start building an other life. So, here it goes:

I had something like 20 prints, portraits of friends essentially assembled as a portfolio that wanted to look like one of those of the top fashion photographers I was meeting in the studio where I had worked as an assistant and had just been sacked from for using the company's car to go to a rave and "loosing" it. A friend  suggested I show my pictures to the graphic design team of a new music magazine called Magic. I went along. Somebody called me 3 weeks later and said could I start working for the magazine. There would be a portrait to do the next day, at the Source Lab offices, the artist name was DJ Krush. "Sure" I said trying to sound professional. I put the phone down and howled and wailed and jumped and just felt the rush of joy going through my vein; DJ Krush was one of my musical hero at that exact time, his second album Strictly Turntablized was playing on loop at home.The following day, I had half an hour to do my thing, in the lovely parisian courtyard of Source Lab which was the distributer for Mo'Wax record. May be because everyone there was so cool, the shoot went well, I liked the result. I think I was dripping with sweat when I processed the 2 or 3 rolls that night. Later on I shot a few portraits for Magic until, while living in London, I screwed up somehow on a shoot of Cocteau Twins and I never heard from them again(I did bump in to Robyn Guthrie once...a fine gentleman he is). Mo'Wax was the latest hip label to come out of London at the time, producing along with the Bristol based Massive Attack, the best of what would be known as Trip Hop music. I still like DJ Krush, I will always admire the guy, I'm very faithful like that. After that, I could never differentiate pleasure from work, which was handy because in London, you never got payed as a music photographer. I went to show my portraits to the art director at Mo'Wax when I moved to London, we became very good friends and he gave me all the Mo'Wax promos. Then the dream started fading...

be the night

be the night.......  . .. decide to be the night

cos your move' are alright

be the night. be the night...

..decide to be the night...be the night..

papadapa..ppapadapapada.be the night...

...

SAMO

I did mention the bananas, didn't I?

leaves of grass

Only recently did I understand how much I long for a mentor, a guru...somebody, not blogger, I could show my pictures to and discuss how to improve, be shown possible directions. I have assisted about a hundred different photographers in my youth, but I was not a very good assistant, none of them never offered to take me as their full time assistant, I did not try very hard to make myself worthy, I was happy just to cross their pass... I never really thought photography was a serious business, I never thought life was a serious business. Now that I am stranded in my creative no man's land, I often wonder where I find the energy to carry on taking all those photographs that never get shared. It is an act not dissimilar to writing poetry; you just have to spit it out. If I had been a 19 th century poet, I would have chosen Walt Whitman as a mentor. If I had been smart, I would have gone to that Dieter Appelt class...Dieter, hörst du mich?

Ohne Hände

MY house

Dark matter

Aaah, the Wellcome collection has a show on at the moment titled Dirt: the filthy reality of everyday life. 

A lot about how to eliminate it but a beautiful display by James Croak, made of compacted dirt, his 'Window" 1991, gave me the shiver, such a beautiful piece it is. I could never stop talking about the dark stuff, be it dust, or rejects, destroyed repulsed matter of this world and of others. We watched INCEPTION tonight and ended talking afterward about instinct and the construction of the self, the elaboration of fears; what can I say but that this is where I am scavenging on?  The picture above was taken in the cellar of an old farm; It was shot practically blindly as my torch had run out of battery, I could feel cobwebs brushing on my face and hands, the walls of the staircase where I stood were oozing...the ten minutes it took me to shoot were a bit like a scale and polish at the dentist, unpleasant self-inflicted and mildly painful exercise that will eventually brings its reward.